Instead of loading the desktop after the boot splash, like the first video does, I added the facebrowser preview by Mat Tomaszewski (although we won't see that in Karmic, everybody loves the bling). Perhaps the throbber should spin a little faster and I should have added a bit more motion blur? Anyway, this is merely a proof-of-concept.

I think the first one is great. The second has the potential to be even better, but I feel like the glow was a bit over-done or something. If that got tweaked a little, it would be FANTASTIC. I hope the Canonical people are paying attention to these because having one of your designs would make an AWESOME first impression for Ubuntu 9.10.